A Regional Consensus

Court and legislatures in the Americas have increasingly found that defamation should be a civil matter. Here are some key resources in support of free expression.

International conventions & declarations

The Declaration of Principles on Freedom of Expression, adopted by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in 2000, asserts that criminal defamation laws violate freedom of expression guarantees and that public officials should be subject to greater scrutiny. http://www.cidh.oas.org/declaration.htm

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the U.N. General Assembly in 1948, establishes in Article 19 that: "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml

Adopted at the ninth international conference of American states, which also established the Organization of American States, the declaration on human rights establishes the right to freedom of expression in Article 4. http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/oasinstr/zoas2dec.htm